Week Two - Original Prompt

I was super taken by the translation workshop we did today. I've thought about translation a lot but never had anyone really sit down and talk through the specific problems of translation with me. I was intrigued by the notion of translating the intent of the poem moreso than the specific words, while trying to retain as much  of the diction and form as possible. Translation is, of course, a key theme of our trip: learning the language, conveying our personalities appropriately to an audience that doesn't speak the same language as us, adopting the culture. The whole trip is translation.

I was wondering, then, about writing the same event twice: once from the perspective of yourself/a narrator, and once from the perspective of another party. For example, I might write about my first solo attempt in an Italian (German, actually) restaurant, where Sydney and I sat down, looked at the menu, realized no one in the building spoke any English, and made a hasty exit. I can imagine the potential pitfalls of this type of exercise--a writer would have to avoid characterizing the waitress as simply unhelpful and tired of Americans. Writing from the perspective of one of the Italians we meet--maybe Elisa, trying to teach Italian to a bunch of students who keep defaulting to Spanish--would, I think, open up interesting opportunities.